The shipwreck of grieving

Rain frog

The Mayans have a serious froggy called Uo. The rain caller. It’s a fat plop of a frog that burrows in mud. (Read about the Uo here)

When I lived in Mexico, we often made our evening paseo near a long-abandoned hotel; during the rainy season the frogs who lived in the drippy jungle and roofless building chorused like something out of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I’m not sure if the Uo makes its home on the Pacific coast of Mexico, but every time it was going to rain, the ranas that lived in the overgrown hotel garden sang like the feverish lovers they were.

Here in the drought-dusty Sierra, we have been crying for rain. And the day before the big California-walloper storm hit, I heard a few tree frogs singing. Not many, but their small voices rang out like oracles.

It’s been a long while since I’ve heard froggy voices of any kind. They all but disappeared from Silicon Valley decades ago. The Sierra frogs I heard heralded a good soaking rain, and I made the above picture to honor them as the rain bucketed down last night, and to ease my anxiety about flooding, mudslides, and all the other horror stories from the National Weather Service.

I needn’t have worried about rain. Because right now? It’s snowing.

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The bird on this blog

My mother passed away in the last hours of 2016. Sometimes when life hurts too much, I need to write and share. This year, that's what I'm doing. I'm warning you, at least for the foreseeable future, this blog will be about loss and how to deal with it.

If you want happiness, painting tips, and pleasant nattering, visit my website, www.Margaretsloan.com. I promise, there won't be a lot of sadness there.